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Hi Mike,
Just wondered if you could clear something up for me. I’ve just done the specimen exam as final revision practice and I got question 4 wrong and I can’t figure out why.
The question gave options and asked which was an automatically fair reason for dismissal. I chose legal prohibition but the answer was unofficial industrial action (which was the only other option I considered as the other two were clearly wrong).
I just checked my notes and legal prohibition is listed as one of the five fair reasons so I’m not sure where I’ve gone wrong. I’m clearly missing something but I’m not sure what?
Also, on question 1 of part B when it asked to state the level of damages Az could claim I said that they had fully mitigated their losses so could claim nominal damages only. The answer said no damages. Would I have lost the mark for that one? I have assumed so in marking myself but again I’m not sure of my own notes. What is the rule regarding nominal damages?
Thanks for your help!
Jenny
I would have cited BOTH legal prohibition AND unofficial industrial action 🙁
If you have fully mitigated your losses, I believe the rule is that you cannot claim damages (because you have suffered no loss)
However the court may, in its discretion, award you damages
Ok?
That’s what I thought for the first one. I hate MCQs as I lost 2 marks on that!
On the second one, thanks – I should have said no damages to claim. I’ll remember that now.
Finding it very hard to judge how I’m doing on the Section B questions. Sometimes the answers are literally one or two lines long but try as I might I cannot be as succinct as they are – and then, when I do manage a relatively short answer, the given one is longer!
Aargh!
The six marks available are often broken down into 3 x 2 marks
2 marks is 2.4 minutes of reading, thinking and writing or 1.2 minutes per mark.
Here’s an exercise for you to do NOW, this minute
Get a book / magazine handy and a pen, some paper and a stop watch
Turn to any page
Start your stopwatch and start writing, just copying, anything from the book.
Stop after 1 minute 12 seconds
When you’ve done that, post again and tell me how much you managed to write (1 line? 1.5? 2 lines?)
Good grief!! I managed 2 and half lines and that was trying to write quickly!!
I just did the December 14 paper again and felt like I’d messed up Section B as, although I was on the right lines, the examiner’s answers were much, much fuller than mine.
However, based on that timed exercise no-one could possibly write that much in the time given. Difficulty is judging what is ‘a full explanation’ as per the marking scheme based on only having time to write 5 lines for a two mark question (don’t think I could write any faster and still be legible!!).
Incidentally, there was a similar question to my previous query in this exam – about fair reasons for dismissal but this time needed to choose two from four. One was clearly unfair (refusal to join trade union), one clearly fair (capabilities) so one from the other two – which were legal prohibition and unofficial industrial activities. So, I stuck with my previous choice of legal prohibition – but this time the answer was right. Go figure!
Jenny, that’s a really important lesson that you have just learned! I started last year to do the same exercise with my students and, wow, we they surprised.
That 2.5 lines is the ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM length of a sentence / paragraph in an F4 exam. And that’s not taking into account reading and thinking time!
When you get there, do the same for the later F papers but, for them, time yourself over 1 minute 18 seconds. That time DOES take into account reading and planning time (30 seconds per point)
Thanks Mike!
Unfortunately I’ve only got F8 left after Monday (assuming these three went well) as I’ve done the papers in a peculiar order – well, it made sense to me anyway.
But your lesson will be very useful for Monday and then for F8. I must admit, despite timing myself rigorously during practice questions and mocks I still ran way over time on both F5 and F9 so time management is definitely a weakness.
Thanks again for all your help!
That is such a frequent comment on this site “I didn’t have enough time”
But this will stand you in good stead for F4, F8 and certainly for P1, P2 and P7 and those are just my papers. I’ve no doubt it applies to the other P level papers too.
I’ll see you in F8 (fingers crossed!).
By the way, what would you recommend as a good paper to go alongside it from the Ps? I’ve decided against doing three ever again as my tiny mind can’t take it so will stick with two.
I’m assuming F8 is all discursive so would probably want something calculation based to balance it out. I know we don’t need to do P1-3 first anymore but would you still recommend one of those rather than the options? I only know I’ll be doing Advanced Tax as one option, haven’t decided on the other one yet.
Any advice most gratefully received!
I don’t know if F8 clashes with P7 but, if it doesn’t, you could do both auditing papers together. And that means that, even with your tiny mind ( 😉 ) you could combine those with P1 that also has ethics in there
The only downside of that is that P7 combines with P2
And the only downside of that is that P2 might well deserve to be tackled on its own!
I really have no idea whether that helps at all!
Is P2 the one known as ‘the beast’? If so, I think that might have to be a standalone.
The ones that overlap do make a difference. I found that F4 went quite nicely with F9 to my surprise so that’s definitely worth taking into consideration.
You have helped (again!).
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